Love in the Frozen Wastes
Aniquyyaq iglignaq.
Such a loveable snow-house.
The first thing Aqaun saw when he woke up was his wife, Uummaq, changing the baby. The seal-oil fire had burned out, but his eldest son Kitaauraq began to strike the flint to heat the small space again. Aqaun yawned, and stretched, letting loose his black and unkempt mane. Uummaq scoffed, and threw a clean diaper at him.
“Lazybones!” she chided. “You should have been up an hour ago!”
Aqaun merely smiled. “I was having a good rest,” he said. “Now I can hunt for a longer time!”
“And be late at home,” Uummaq retorted. “And miss all the aktughruaq. And come home empty-handed. Again.”
“When have I ever failed you?” Aqaun said as he leaned over and rubbed his nose against hers. She pushed him away, her blush small but noticeable. He stood up and dressed in his heavy hide atigi, took a finely crafted harpoon from the nearby rack, slung it on his back and broke open the snow that was used to seal the front entrance for the night.
Although it was still late-to-midwinter, the snow and the clouds reflected and refracted the light back and forth to such an intensity that anyone else would have called it a bright morning, despite the tiny sliver of the sun that sputtered fitfully along the horizon’s edge.
Aqaun reached for a pocket on the outside of his atigi, and pulled out a small piece of hide with two wide slots cut out of them. He put the hide over his eyes, the slits filtering the light so he would not be blinded by the glare that he knew would increase as the day would wax and wane… what little day there still was in these northern climates.
“Aapa!” Kitaauraq called as Aqaun stepped out onto the snow. “When can I go hunting with you?”
Aqaun smiled. He turned back to the snow-house’s entrance where his son waited. “Aaraagha, you have asked that for the fifteenth day in a row!” he said. “And I have told you no, you are too young still. Now let me tell you the real reason why I need you here.”
Aqaun pointed to the snowy plain in front of them. “Out there are creatures that help us survive; the aligraq, the aiviq, the aghviq, and many more that we sing about in the songs of our ancestors. There is also the nanuq. What do you think would happen if the nanuq came to our door? Would he say ‘Hello Kitaauraq, how are you?’ He would not.”
Aqaun pointed to the rack inside the snow-house, where a smaller and sharper harpoon sat. “If the nanuq pokes his black nose into our den, I need you to protect your Aaka,” he said in a serious voice. “Because there is no one else who will do so.”
Kitaauraq looked down, feeling the weight of responsibility. He remembered the stories his father told of the white nanuq and the many times the hunter would underestimate him, and fall victim to his claws and his strength.
Aqaun smiled, and brought his son’s face back up to him. “Do not worry,” Aqaun said. “Keep the nanuq away, and some day you will be old enough to come with me.”
Kitaauraq’s face beamed with pleasure at that. “Aapa, can you sing us a song? Sing us an old song, one of our ancestors!”
“Aapa needs to get hunting!” Uummaq shouted from inside the snow-house.
Aqaun laughed. “Alright, I will sing one song, one that our ancestors themselves wrote!” he exclaimed.
He stood up, put his hoof over his heart, and stared at the sky as he began to croon in a soft baritone:
The flags, they flew on towers stretched high
Along the ground, the fighters did strike
Within the hills the ptarmigan cries
The fish wiggled from the death-grasp of pike
Along the ground, the fighters did strike
Scurried with worry, the lemmings did go
The fish wiggled from the death-grasp of pike
Under the ever-present threat of snow
Scurried with worry, the lemmings did go
The light disappeared at the summer’s eclipse
Under the ever-present threat of snow
Water doesn’t flow from the winter’s cold lips
The light disappeared at the summer’s eclipse
Insects would swarm at the equinox’s heat
Water doesn’t flow from the winter’s cold lips
The caribou did run with thundering feet
“Please,” says the lover, “Won’t you stay?”
Within the hills the ptarmigan cries
“I have no choice,” says the hunter at bay.
The flags, they flew on towers stretched high
Aqaun kissed his son on the nose and went to the side of the snow-house, where the mukluks were kept. He pulled one over each hoof, using his teeth to tie the ughruk-hide boots tight onto his legs. He stood back up and trotted out across the pure-white landscape, bringing out his harpoon to test the snow in front of him as he ran.
Love in the Frozen Wastes
Aqaun ran across the snow as he reached the shoreline. No one who saw what he saw would have seen the point at which ice replaced the ground, but he saw it, and he immediately slowed his pace. He clambered up one particularly big ice floe and cast his gaze around him.
The ice was still, but Aqaun could feel the grinding of the floe beneath his hooves. The early months were always chaotic; the ice wanted to move, but there wasn’t enough melted water to make room for each floe to move where they wanted to move. It made for a deceptive landscape; calm on top, but hell on bottom, and crossovers between the two occurring more often than not.
Aqaun plotted as safe a route as he could from his point and jumped down, hopping from floe to floe with the care and speed of a mountain goat. His mukluks kept his hooves warm, but allowed him to feel the slightest shift of the frozen ice underneath him.
He spotted a small, almost unnoticeable round hole about a centimeter or so in diameter, affixed strangely atop a small dome-like structure. Aqaun recognized the hole and what it meant. He quickly felt for wind, settled down-wind of the hole and waited.
The wait was very long. The sun vanished from the horizon, the glare dimming to a pale, deep blue. Still Aqaun waited. As the light began to fade entirely, he heard a sound from the hole; a rasp, a breath, and the slosh of water.
Aqaun leaped forward and plunged his harpoon into the hole. He held onto the shaft as a small creature bucked and thrashed inside the small tunnel underneath the dome of ice. Aqaun felt its struggles fade almost as soon as they started; it was a solid and well-aimed hit. He put his back into lifting the creature up through the dome, kicking and breaking the ice so he could hoist the thing onto the ice.
It came up slowly from its breathing hole. It was an aligrauraq; a young bearded seal. Why it was without its mother, Aqaun didn’t know. He knelt by the seal, and put his front hooves together in prayer:
“Quyana, Aligrauraq; uvagutisisuqllautaq,” he whispered, before he dislodged the harpoon from the seal’s skull and proceeded to slit the animal open and gut it. He took great care with the stomach; he remembered when he was a young colt and he plunged his hoof into the stinging gastric acid by accident.
He left the guts on the ice except for the liver, picked the carcass up and quickly trotted for home. The ice plus the weight of the dead seal made travel difficult, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He breathed a sigh of relief when the shoreline appeared. He quickly dashed for home, his thoughts on the interested look his son Kitaauraq’s face would have as he showed him how to cut the choice meat from the bones… and also on the strong and firm hooves of Uummaq throughout the long winter’s night.
The last vestiges of daylight had disappeared by this time. Aqaun kept his eyes scanning for any faint glow from the seal oil lamp and his nostrils open for the particularly acrid smell of the burning seal oil. He worried when he knew he should be getting close, and he still detected neither. He stopped and checked the wind; the snow-house would be down-wind of him, so by the time he smelled it, it would already be behind him.
He stumbled upon the snow-house purely by accident when his front hooves tripped over an outcrop of snow. He tumbled down to the entrance, which to his surprise was open… and dark. He did smell a faint scent of the seal-oil lamp, but it was old by at least several hours. He set his catch aside and fumbled inside. He felt for the seal-oil lamp, which was overturned.
Aqaun felt around some more and found the flint. He started the lamp wick again, which sputtered and finally flickered to life. He protected the flame from the draft, and from its faint light saw a grisly scene he was afraid he would see.
Everything was thrown around in chaos; the blankets were shredded, the fabrics torn, the smaller harpoon shaft broken. And the blood; it seemed to coat everything in the small space. Big chunks of the snow-house were torn from the walls, the ground a mish-mash of hide, thread, ice and the crimson color of blood.
He lifted the lantern with his mouth, one hoof over the lantern to keep the breeze from blowing it out. He wondered at something: where were the bodies? He walked outside and did a quick scan around the house: no tracks except for his. So the bodies were not dragged away… he thought. He went back inside and took a closer look at the debris.
That’s when he noticed the hair. Not the green hair color of his wife, Uummaq, nor the pale blonde hair of his son Kitaauraq or Aqpikauraq, his newborn daughter. This hair was brown, short, and speckled, and it coated the place quite thoroughly. He wondered how an assailant could approach the snow-house unseen, be able to come in and do this kind of damage, take the bodies and just… vanish, leaving only this clue.
That’s when Aqaun realized: It had to be them! He shifted through the debris and found one more thing: a brown feather. This confirmed his suspicion.
For whatever reason, a Pegasus forced its way into his home and kidnapped his family. It had to be one Pegusas, or a family of them, due to the presence of the prolific-but-singular-in-nature hair that was left behind.
But Aqaun couldn’t do anything about that right now. Night had set in full swing, so there was no hope of him reaching the culprits… not right away, at least. Aqaun knew that the skies were frigid, and that no Pegasi could withstand the cold for long. He managed to locate one undamaged sleeping bag and clear enough space among the junk to lay down. He remembered the opening; he took some snow and blocked up the entrance. He didn’t worry about the dead seal; the cold would keep it fresh.
He fell asleep to the lull of the breeze that blows in the midst of silent, open spaces. The light from the seal-oil lamp eventually burned low, and then out in a slow and steady decline of lumens. Aqaun dreamed of another kind of hunting; the one that involved atuqtaksraq.
